Construction on a Lansing outpatient cancer treatment center is expected to start before this fall following a state approval process that drew accusations of tampering by local health care entities.
A certificate of need for Compass Health Care’s Compass Cancer Center, 1525 W. Lake Lansing Road, was approved earlier this April by the Michigan Department of Community Health, a move that should allow construction to start before this fall.
The certificate of need approval process is a lengthy series of steps requiring medical entities to demonstrate sufficient resources and customer demand for various centers.
Angela Minicuci, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Community Health, said Compass Health Care met benchmarks put forward by the state.
Chris Abood, a Lansing physician and member of Compass Health Care, said in a previous interview with The State News that the approval process had been interfered with by both Sparrow Health System and MSU HealthTeam.
MSU HealthTeam, the medicinal arm of faculty from the three university colleges of medicine, has its own comprehensive cancer center.
Those groups, Abood said, opposed the center’s construction given the new, state-of-the-art cancer treatment technology it would bring to the area.
Rich Ward, CEO of MSU HealthTeam, said the group approached the commission with concerns that the new center would not be able to meet certain patient volume thresholds.
The state’s approval process states that, among other things, any new radiation therapy service must project 8,000 equivalent treatment visits, which reflects the average amount of time one patient spends using a radiation unit in one treatment visit.
“MSU HealthTeam is not in a position to assess the fairness of the (certificate of need) process,” Ward said in an email.
Dave Corteville, the chief operating officer of Compass Health Care, said the center was able to successfully meet state requirements.
“Several other entities in the area questioned whether or not we could demonstrate the appropriate need,” he said. “We did that.”
Ward said the group is not worried about competition for patients the new for-profit center might bring, but it is concerned with increased health care costs similar area treatment centers will face to keep up with expensive technology.
He said the university clinics also focus on research, making them more valuable to the community.
“A new, for-profit group in the community will not be able to provide the same breadth and depth of oncology, clinical and research services,” he said in the email.
Sparrow Health System declined to comment.
Compass does not view the new center as a means of competing with MSU, Corteville said.
“We’re looking at this as an enhancement to the existing oncology care,” he said.
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